Network News Anchor Desk

History

The first television network newscasts appeared in the 1940s. Women contributed very little to these news programs until the 1970s and 1980s. The word anchor was not coined, according to CBS, until it was used to describe Walter Cronkite's role in the coverage of the 1952 presidential election. Prior to that event, the person in front of the camera was described as a newscaster, announcer, or commentator—all words borrowed from radio news. Researchers at the CBS Television Audience Research Institute recommended that people who delivered the news be suitable in dress and personality to be welcomed into the intimate setting of a family's living room. The news industry is a traditionally male business, and the nature of its subject matter—community, state, national, and world leaders leading change and restoring order—has dictated that men are featured in news stories. For many years, men were also telling stories that included comments from other men. Women in newsrooms are more likely to be assigned to cover “soft” news events or topics considered to be so-called women's issues. A female reporter promoted to the anchor desk would then have to struggle to convey the perception that she was qualified for that work, again reducing the number of women qualified to hold that position.

In the 1970s, women entered network news at significant rates after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered that all businesses making more than $50,000 and employing 50 or more people match their employment demographics to the demographics of the community in which they were located. However, change at the anchor desk was slow. Carole Simpson, who was with ABC News, said when she started in network television in 1974 that if she had been asked if there would still be three white male anchors in 2001 she would have thought that was impossible. Only two years later, in 1976, Barbara Walters coanchored ABC Evening News with Harry Reasoner—a landmark event—but the pairing ended in 1978 because of Reasoner's disdain for Walters, which was almost palpable on air. CBS tried a similar pairing from 1993 to 1995, placing Connie Chung as coanchor with Dan Rather, [Page 252]with similar negative results. ABC paired Elizabeth Vargas with Bob Woodruff in 2004. Woodruff was injured in Iraq while Vargas was absent on family leave; that pairing was also short-lived.

Women in early 20th-century newsrooms were more likely to be assigned to cover “soft” news events and did not appear at the anchor desk until the mid-1970s. Carole Simpson was the first African American woman to have anchor duties at a major network.

(http://Photos.com)

...